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St Clement Danes has served as the central church of the Royal Air Force since 1958, following a distinguished restoration by Anthony Lloyd in 1955-8 to repair the ravages of bombing in 1941. The body of the church had been rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren in 1680-2, but the tower had been the work of Joshua Marshall in 1669-70, and to that tower James Gibbs had added the familiar steeple in 1719-1720.

It is a common feature in the history of the Free Churches that a new church was often formed by a split in an existing one, and that such a split frequently centred on the choice of a new pastor. St Augustine’s is a rare instance of this process in the Church of England, for its founder, Richard Carr Kirkpatrick, felt compelled to found a new Anglo-catholic parish in Kilburn when his existing ministry at St Mary’s, Priory Road, was upset by a new Evangelical incumbent. He presided over the erection of an extraordinary church, which is one of the most important Victorian buildings in London.

John Francis Bentley (1839-1902) designed the cathedral, for which he drew inspiration from Santa Sophia in Constantinople, the most famous of all Byzantine churches, and from the ancient churches of Ravenna, where he admired the carved capitals and the early mosaics. He aimed at an early Christian style rather than a purely Byzantine one, and Ravenna was an ideal source, for there East had met West. Bentley had at his disposal at Westminster a rectangular site, at the east end of which he had to build a hall and substantial houses for the archbishop and his clergy.

John Francis Bentley (1839-1902) designed the cathedral, for which he drew inspiration from Santa Sophia in Constantinople, the most famous of all Byzantine churches, and from the ancient churches of Ravenna, where he admired the carved capitals and the early mosaics. He aimed at an early Christian style rather than a purely Byzantine one, and Ravenna was an ideal source, for there East had met West. Bentley had at his disposal at Westminster a rectangular site, at the east end of which he had to build a hall and substantial houses for the archbishop and his clergy.

The campanile of Westminster Cathedral soars above the buildings and bustle of London's Victoria like an exclamation of astonishment. This principal Roman Catholic church in London is no less striking for its distinctive Byzantine style today than when it was completed in 1903. Richard Norman Shaw said of it: 'It is like a revelation after the feeble Gothic stuff on which we have been mainly fed for the last half-century.'

Until the end of the 16th century, monuments in the abbey were few. There were the great royal tombs, but relatively few others, and they were all of kinsmen of the monarchs, of royal officials or of members of the foundation. In the late Elizabethan and early Stuart decades, huge monuments started to appear.

The foundation stone of King Henry Ill's church was laid in 1245. By the time of the king's death in 1272, the east end had been completed, but only a part of the nave. The king's architect was Henry of Reyns, who referred to Reims Cathedral as a model. The interior of Westminster Abbey is markedly tall, on the French model; on the other hand, some of the details of its construction (such as the use of a ridge-rib in the east part) are English.

Westminster Abbey lies at the heart of English history. Monarchs of the nation for almost a millennium have come and gone through its doors and have been crowned and entombed within its walls. It owes its considerable importance to St Edward the Confessor, King of England from 1042 to 1066. He went to live at Westminster and decided to rebuild an existing Benedictine monastery of St Peter on a substantial scale, in accordance with the latest architectural ideas in Normandy, where he had been exiled for 25 years.

This is the principal London church of the Jesuits, St Ignatius Loyola's 'shock troops' of the Counter-Reformation, who preside here over a fine work of the Victorian Gothic Revival. It is arguably the finest Catholic church of that style in London, which is all the more creditable as the nave was built early in the Gothic Revival in 1844-9 and no fewer than three architects had a major part in designing the whole.

London has a vast number of Victorian churches, which were among the major works of the leading architects of the time, but All Saints' has a unique place in the firmament, for it was built as a model church by those who had the greatest influence in High Church circles. Alexander Beresford-Hope, its principal benefactor, wanted to build not an ordinary parish church but a 'higher and more minster-like type'.